A Baltic Christmas

On arrival at Vilnius airport (VNO), your chauffeur meets you and drives the short distance into the city to the Grand Hotel Vilnius on Cathedral Square. For Advent the square below is given over to the Christmas market, its wooden stalls and the tall city tree lit against the early dark. Once you have settled in, your private guide walks you out into the market for a first cup of karštas vynas, the Lithuanian mulled wine, and a gentle orienting loop of the baroque Old Town as the lamps come on. As the evening draws in, your guide leads you to a festive welcome dinner in an Old Town cellar, the first of the week's warming meals. The lamplit lanes are quiet by the time you return, and the rest of the night is your own.

After breakfast your guide leads you deeper into the Old Town, the largest baroque quarter in northern Europe, its churches and courtyards under a dusting of snow. The morning takes in St Anne's and the university's inner yards, with warming stops at the market for gingerbread and karštas vynas. In the afternoon your party has a private candlelit choral concert in a baroque church interior, opened for your group alone, the acoustics carrying the old Advent carols. Later your guide brings you to a private amber atelier, a small warm room out of the cold, where Baltic gold is graded, cut and set into jewellery by hand. The evening on Cathedral Square is your own, the market open late under the lit tree.

After breakfast your chauffeur drives you west and north out of Lithuania, the forests and fields white with winter. You cross your first border into Latvia and break the journey at Rundāle Palace, the baroque residence built for the Dukes of Courland and often called the Versailles of the north. After the public has gone, the palace is yours for a private walk through the gilded state rooms and the great ballroom, the formal gardens hushed under snow beyond the windows. From Rundāle it is a shorter run north to Riga, where you check in at the Grand Hotel Kempinski opposite the Freedom Monument. Your guide walks you out for a first look at the Dome Square Christmas market and a cup of mulled wine before dinner on your own in the lamplit Old Town.

The day is Riga's. Your guide begins on Dome Square and at the House of the Blackheads, where a merchant guild is said to have decorated the first Christmas tree in 1510, a claim the city wears proudly (Tallinn, as you will hear, makes an older one). You walk the medieval core and then the Art Nouveau boulevards around Alberta iela, Riga holding one of the world's densest concentrations of the style, the facades edged with snow. At the Central Market, its halls set in old Zeppelin hangars, you taste your way through Latvian winter food: smoked fish, rye breads, cheeses, honey and a warming glass of Riga Black Balsam. The markets stay open into the evening, which is yours to wander with a last cup of mulled wine.

After breakfast your chauffeur turns north out of Riga into the Gauja valley, the wooded river gorge that Latvians call their Switzerland, at its stillest under winter snow. You pause at Sigulda for the red brick keep at Turaida and the wide view over the white valley, a warming stop before the border. From there the road runs north across Estonia, farm and forest giving way at last to the Gulf of Finland. You reach Tallinn in the evening and check in at the Hotel Telegraaf inside the medieval walls, a few minutes' walk from the Town Hall Square market. Your guide takes you out for a first look at the great tree and the lit stalls before dinner on your own within the walls.

Your full Tallinn day begins in the best-preserved medieval old town in northern Europe, its walls and towers intact around you. Your guide leads you from the Town Hall Square, where the Christmas market has run since the fifteenth century and is regularly voted the finest in Europe, up to Toompea hill for the rooftop views over the snow-covered town. Along the way you stop for Tallinn marzipan, invented here by the city's apothecaries, and warm wine at the market stalls. The town makes the oldest tree claim of all, 1441, older than Riga's, and the rivalry is part of the fun. As the evening comes, a dinner in a medieval guild hall closes the week, the vaulted room and the old recipes a fitting last night. The cobbled lanes are yours afterwards.

Your last morning is unhurried: a final breakfast within the walls, then a choice between a marzipan-painting workshop in the Old Town, the traditional Tallinn craft, or a quiet hour in the hotel spa out of the cold. If there is time, a last loop of the Town Hall Square market lets you carry a little of it home. When you are ready, your chauffeur drives you to Tallinn airport (TLL) for your departure, the same guide and chauffeur team who met you in Vilnius seeing you off. Three capitals, three market squares, one week of the north at its warmest hour.